Hard Deck

The problem with that sort of approach is that there is no formula that can work. Not only do gliders differ in glide performance but the atmosphere differs a lot from time to time.

Thanks for the feedback and help in my understanding. To clarify what I was thinking...

I left WX out of the list of things to consider for the penalty on purpose. It did not seem fair to have penalties accessed based on wind values that would not be known until the scoring program looked at all the IGC's and figured them out. A fallback position might be to publish an assumed wind and use if for scoring.

Regardless of each glider's actual performance, I was thinking of a single conservative polar for the contest. My thought was that this would be a sort of handicap to nudge scoring more to the pilot's skill instead of the ship performance.

For the landing points, it seems to me that the first unintended consequence would be the risk of a bunch of gliders crowding a single field. Perhaps landing areas would make more sense.

It seems to me that a simplified assumption of expected WX, unified polar, and landing areas are implicit in the drawing of the SUA's?